At least 10 thousand Ukrainian children may soon be deported from the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine under the pretext of attending cultural events in the Russian Federation. According to the official data, since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, at least 19.5 thousand Ukrainian children were taken to Russia. The real figure may be much bigger, taking into account the deportation of Ukrainian children that began in 2014.
The largest demographic crisis in the Russian Federation since the collapse of the USSR, aggravated by the mass death of Russian men in the war and the general flight of Russians from the country, encourages Putin to steal Ukrainian children and implant Russian identity in them. Thus, soon after the liberation of Kherson by Ukrainian troops, it became known that during the occupation, the Russian military was involved, among other things, in kidnapping Ukrainian children. According to eyewitnesses, Ukrainian children became the main target of the occupiers: they looked for them wherever they could: in schools, shelters, and children’s hospitals. They were deported to the territory of the Rostov region of the Russian Federation to the so-called filtration camps, and then placed throughout Russia: to orphanages, summer camps, foster families. The Russians are doing everything to make it impossible for Ukrainian children to return home.
Each such case must be investigated and made public, and all Russian war criminals involved in the deportation of Ukrainian children must be punished. It should be noted that the deportation of children from Ukraine became the main prerequisite for an arrest warrant for Putin by the ICC in The Hague. Consequently, sanctions against a terrorist state that steals children should be strengthened and bring its inevitable defeat closer. The international isolation of the Russian Federation should become absolute.